Gothic 3 - Unofficial Community Patch v1.3 (German)

June 27th, 2007, 09:23

An updated version of the Community Fix Pack for Gothic 3 has been released. v1.3 includes more than 100 small fixes, most of them sorting out quests and dialogs, and a new installer.
The patch is in German, an English version is coming soon.More information.

Has anybody actually played the game extensively with these patches yet? How significant is the improvement? Considering I never ran into bugs myself, with over 100 fixes the game should be fairly stable, right?

Looking at the translated changelog (available here) and glancing around the forums a bit, I've concluded that there's no need to hurry in applying the patches and replaying G3. The fixes are mostly minor things, like removing opposing quests (if you liberate Cape Dun, you no longer have the "Destroy Reddock" quest), taking care of duplicate items (chalices, druid stones), and other minor dialogue fixes - all in all, nothing that important, and nothing that'd drastically change your opinion of G3. Plus, with this rate of development, I doubt you'd get to level 20 before another patch is released.

While I DO support community patches, and think it's a good thing, the amount the community can fix is very limited (namely, to the things they've been fixing this whole time), and so this patch is hardly a substitute for a "real" patch, but is certainly handy. Final verdict? Getting it is probably a good idea in a month or two (or more), when you get a desire to replay G3 - replaying just because of the patch is hardly worth it.

(the you here is in general; I'm not referring to anyone in specific).

I've installed both 1.2 and now the 1.3 german version with the english game and highly recommend using the patch. With 1.2 there were no stability issues at all with hours of playing. 1.3 seems fine. You just have to backup the main .ini file (and copy it back if you want/or change ~4 german text to english) before you apply a patch - as well as uninstall a patch before installing a newer one.

Simple and sweet.
This is all on Vista 32bit, geforce 8800gts, with the 2gb+ memory option enabled.

I second the "backup your ini" comment. There are reports from people who are now all of a sudden getting the "Where is the guru" error after they patched their ge3.ini file with the one from the community patch. What's nice is that the installer will ask you whether you want to keep your old ini or use the one from the community patch. If you had no problems with your old one, I'd recommend to keep it and to manually apply the error corrections (like that one erroneous SpeedTree cache entry) that can be found in sticky posts at most Gothic 3 (tech) forums (at the JoWooD forums, at WoG and even here at RPG Watch).

I wouldn´t hold my breath, at least not for the moment, if i were you, Thaurin.

VPeric gave a nicely balanced view:
It really depends what you´re after - and what you´re gripes with G3 are.
Mainly messed up dialog sequences and quests have been fixed up to now.
They take the lion´s share of the 100 discussed fixes.

If you´re out for more stability, getting rid of crashes and "Gurus", issues that are most likely deeper routed in game and engine, then there´s not much in it for you - yet.
(Apart from maybe the mentioned .ini adjustments)
Why is that?
As i read few days ago, the community team has not yet been handed the source code.
And before that doesn´t happen, i don´t expect any substantial improvements in that department.
Then they first have to read themselves into it, get the concepts buried within and then, only then, they can assess the perspective of fixing the more sever issues.
I would be surprised if we get any well founded statement from them on this matter within the, say, next two months.

Give them their time - they deserve it!

What i´m a bit surprised about, though, is your claim you had never any bugs?
Hard to believe you shouldn´t have stepped into any of the dozens quest or dialog bugs fixed in said patches - or did you just consider them insignificant, so basically even overlooked them ?
Because from what i got on the fixing procedures and bug causes of that type they would have to be common to ALL copies, unlike the crash irks who are more volatile and individual in comparison.

Well, you have to consider that I didn't finish the game yet. I'm not sure how many hours I played it in total, but apart from some performance issues that mostly went away after I upgraded to 2GB, and the broken detail texture distance graphical glitch of the ocean, I've never really encountering anything very annoying like a crash— a few, maybe. What I was getting at, removing quests you can't finish any more after completing something else does add to the overall feel and stability of the game. I hate loads of useless entries in my quest log.

Sounds like their fixes would improve on my game significantly, precisely because of more consistency in the quests. Besides, didn't they add trainers for some skills that previously didn't have trainers? And they lowered the volume on that annoying fire swords? There are more such fixes and they do add up.

After a proper 1.2 installation I had have any issues either. By proper I mean installing every patch individually up to 1.2, instead of just 1.2 (got various issues when I just patched it with 1.2 directly).

Originally Posted by Maylander
After a proper 1.2 installation I had have any issues either. By proper I mean installing every patch individually up to 1.2, instead of just 1.2 (got various issues when I just patched it with 1.2 directly).

What sort of issues? You definitely do not have to install the community patches in order. In fact, it is recommended to uninstall 1.2 before applying 1.3 because 1.2 has a few features that were removed in 1.3 because they didn't work out as well as intended.
For example, I think that they have removed the combat hit animation (when the hero tumbles back or gets knocked down) in 1.2 to fix the stun-locking and then they re-added the animations back in with 1.3 because a lot of people had problems with the combat due to crippled animations.
So to make sure that this feature from 1.2 is gone, anyone who already has 1.2 installed (and who has issues with the combat animations), should go and uninstall 1.2 (from Add/Remove Programs in the control panel) and then install 1.3. - That's the cleanest and safest method.

Also, on a side note, every single one of these fixes will apparently only work if the related script has not been triggered yet so if anyone is already far into the game and has already talked to most of these NPCs and done their quests, the patch will do next to nothing for you because most of the fixes do not work retroactively.

Originally Posted by Thaurin
Well, you have to consider that I didn't finish the game yet. I'm not sure how many hours I played it in total, but apart from some performance issues that mostly went away after I upgraded to 2GB, and the broken detail texture distance graphical glitch of the ocean, I've never really encountering anything very annoying like a crash— a few, maybe. What I was getting at, removing quests you can't finish any more after completing something else does add to the overall feel and stability of the game. I hate loads of useless entries in my quest log.

Sounds like their fixes would improve on my game significantly, precisely because of more consistency in the quests.

Aye, ok - wasn´t aware of that, sorry.

Yeah, in that case, this patch has definitely been made for you!

Besides, didn't they add trainers for some skills that previously didn't have trainers?

They even activated the related two perks (i can´t get them together anymore, sorry ) and then picked two chars, assigning them as trainers.
I also can´t remember really anymore whether they´ve been the ones the PBs had foreseen regarding that, but it might be.

And they lowered the volume on that annoying fire swords? There are more such fixes and they do add up.

AFAIK, they simply switched it off for the moment, because it was so bugging.
Eventually at a later time, after access to source code and more file formats, they´ll be able to fit it in correctly.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Also, on a side note, every single one of these fixes will apparently only work if the related script has not been triggered yet so if anyone is already far into the game and has already talked to most of these NPCs and done their quests, the patch will do next to nothing for you because most of the fixes do not work retroactively.

Ah yeah - savegames.
They cannot update those either, as mentioned before, due not having seen the source code/file format yet.
Otherwise they could parse it, adjust all related flags in a sound way and then save it again. Quite some effort, though.
That´s why you would rather start a new one in the situations Moe referred to.

Originally Posted by Ragon der Magier
They even activated the related two perks (i can´t get them together anymore, sorry ) and then picked two chars, assigning them as trainers.
I also can´t remember really anymore whether they´ve been the ones the PBs had foreseen regarding that, but it might be.

It should be noted though that "Improve Armor" (which can be learnt from the smith in Okara who is called Mannig, I believe) seems to not have any effect. In other words: You can learn the perk but it will not really change your armor values. It's only a dialogue fix so far, not a "real" gameplay fix.

AFAIK, they simply switched it off for the moment, because it was so bugging.
Eventually at a later time, after access to source code and more file formats, they´ll be able to fit it in correctly.

Regarding the firesword, it should be mentioned that the firesword is not bugged for everyone. My firesword has always been pleasantly silent. It seems to depend on the sound provider/driver that you are using (me is using Realtek onBoard sound with EAX 2.0 support enabled and it's fine).